My Favorite Albums from 2024
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Flight b741
Slomosa - Tundra Rock
GUM & Ambrose Kenny-Smith - Ill Times
Donato Dozzy - Magda
Mary Lattimore & Walt McClements - Rain on the Road
Foxing - Foxing
Fabienne Debarre - Welcome to the Age of Broken Minds
Craven Faults - Bounds
Half Waif - See You At the Maypole
Vista House - They’ll See Light
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD
Charli XCX, et al. - Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat
Ben Luka Boysen - Alta Ripa
36 - Exit All the Lights
KNEECAP - Fine Art
A.G. Cook - Britpop
Oval Angle - Figures of Speech
Los Bitchos - Talkie Talkie
Pom Pom Squad - Mirror Starts Moving Without Me
GIFT - Illuminator
Other notable releases: μ-Ziq’s Grush, Loula Yorke’s Volta, Jónsi’s First Light, Deerlady’s Greatest Hits, MILLY’s Your Own Becoming, Pye Corner Audio’s The Endless Echo, Anis Kitu’s Kaihola, Jack White’s NO NAME, MONO’s OATH, WHY?’s The Well I Fell Into, Loma’s How Will I Live Without A Body?, Blisspoint’s Dog, St. Vincent’s All Born Screaming, Goat’s Goat, Hawksmoor’s Oneironautics, Socks and Ballerina’s A Bit Jumpy., Xylitol’s, Anemones, Bogdan Raczynski’s You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Stupid Forever, Nemahsis’s Verbathim, Kelly Lee Owen’s Dreamstate, Loscil’s Umbel, ORB’s Tailem Bend, Floating Points’s Cascade, Kiamos’s II, Frances Forever’s Lockjaw, O.’s WeirdOs, Discovery Zone’s Quantum Web, Prayer’s Loss of Meaning, Chihei Hatakeyama’s Thousand Oceans, Jonny From Space’s Back Then I Didn’t But Now I Do, Trees Speak’s TimeFold, Autechre's AE_2022--
“While the world burns how could you care about a fucking record?” - “free dumb” by illuminati hotties (2020)
As accurate now as it was the summer that it was released, this line from Sara Tudzin’s illuminati hottie’s 2020 album has been rattling around in my head for days (and, really, for months). What was a sickening metaphor in those early pandemic days has now become horrifically literal. These past few weeks, as we’ve watched the wildfires rip through Los Angeles, and this whole past year, as we’ve watched bombs fall on Gaza, watched waters flood Appalachia, watched legions of oppressed peoples near and far suffer and as we’ve also watched a large chunk of this country elect a fascist blowhard to the presidency, I come back to that same question as I’ve contemplated my yearly exercise of aggregating my favorite music of the year: “while the world burns, how can I care about fucking records?”
I don’t have an answer. Not really. And I realize that I’ve been returning to variations on this theme for years in the preamble to my lists and that both handwringing about the morality of writing and a blow-by-blow breakdown on that same process of writing are some of the more tedious things to read so, I’ll try not to go on too long. I can only say that, yes, it’s of course possible to care about multiple things at once, I know, and, indeed, we have to care about multiple things at once in order to move about in this life. But I also realize the privilege of being able to have time and energy to devote to something like this and I acknowledge that. I believe that music is an overall good and I hope that sharing it can spread some kind of happiness or enrichment. And, maybe, I hope it can provide us part of the fuel we need to each attempt to make the world a better place in our own way.
So, in lieu of trying to have some big organizing principle I should probably just jump into talking about the incredible array of music from 2024! I’ve tried various formats to do this in the past, from long essays (which, spoiler alert, this is going to be one of those) to long ranked lists, to, well, nothing at all. This past year yielded so much good stuff that even my ranked list leaves out too much music that meant something to me so this year I’m just going to go (mostly) month-by-month. I hope I can call out something that interests you and, as always, thank you so much for reading and thank you to all the various sources from which I derive my own recommendations. To wit, thank you to my wonderful spouse, family, friends, work colleagues, Kathleen De Vere’s long running Twitch pirate stream Brave New Faves, Small Albums, Stereogum, KEXP, The Quietus, NPR, Hearing Things, A Closer Listen, Rosy Overdrive, Pitchfork (can’t kick the habit) and a special shout out to the user @apacheslomo on the Stereogum comments section for always recommending the best psych rock that nobody else seems to mention.
January saw releases from two albums that reached my top ten, Fabienne Debarre’s Welcome to the Age of Broken Minds and Donato Dozzy’s Magda. Debarre’s record is filled with top-tier electronic pop and Dozzy’s record stretches repeating themes to their transcendent limits. Electronic producer Prayer also put out a stupendous set of late-night deep club jams with Loss of Meaning. Loula Yorke’s Volta deployed mountains of overlapping modular synthesizers that eased the short, cold January days. And Deerlady hit my radar with their debut Masterpieces, which, you know, is a pretty presumptuous thing to name a record, especially for a new band…but, they kinda pull it off! Its mix of gothic stripped-down raw shoegaze is enchanting and I look forward to what they have coming next.
The next couple of months kind of blended together and no single month until June contained as many albums that would hit this list. Still, St. Vincent’s All Born Screaming, in late April, would be easy to call a “return-to-form” if frontwoman Annie Clark ever actually stayed still for any of her projects. From the Fragile-era synth rocker “Broken Man,” to the woozy “Sweetest Fruit,” and finishing with the stunning rave-up title track, St. Vincent proves (again) her dedication to the craft.
Discovery Zone’s Quantum Web, from March, brought me something I didn’t know I needed: nostalgic vaporwave in 2024. Maybe I thought I’d be “over” the aesthetic that’s been like catnip for those of my particular micro-generation, but this album showed how compelling mining those shared collective American memory of 80’s shopping malls and fuzzy late-night UHF signals. Jonny From Space’s Back Then I Didn’t But Now I Do, from a month prior, drew from similar vaporwave inspirations but mixed in healthy amounts of late 90’s Boards of Canada-adjacent “IDM” to boot for an extremely chill–but still compelling–listen.
I also loved the record from Finnish folk-rock group Anis Kiitu titled Kaihola. Featuring both extremely delicate songs with only light voice, violin and accordion and also down-home romp-stomp near-zydeco tunes, it’s such a fun time and it all ends with the unbelievably hopeful “Kurki,” which, if you need a smile on your face and a bit of determination for the immediate future, is a pretty good way to get there. Pye Corner Audio dropped The Endless Echo and what can I say but that Pye Corner Audio shows again that everything they release is worth dedicated exploration. Its soundscape is both retro and futuristic and it plays like the soundtrack to the coolest sci-fi movie on the bottom rack of the direct-to-video cassettes in a rural grocery store in the mid 90’s.
In May, Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements released their incredible collaboration Rain on the Road. Grasping for that very last bit of winter-into-spring feeling, the harpist Lattimore and multi-instrumentalist McClements deliver a set of songs of fractal-like infinite fragile beauty. That same month, in another universe entirely sonically from Rain on the Road-but coming from a similar place of experimental, free-flowing self-expression, hyperpop pioneer and frequent Charli XCX collaborator A.G. Cook gave us Britpop. It’s a towering multi-album project, comprising 3 parts: “past,” “present,” and “future,” and listening to the entire 1 hour 40 minute thing is a remarkable journey into the mind and self-perception of one of our most unique electronic musicians. And it somehow also features my favorite Charli XCX vocal from a year stacked with great performances from the pop icon from Essex, (“Lucifer”).
Post-rock legends MONO returned in June with the incredibly uplifting OATH, which, if you’ve never dabbled in this particular genre, is as good an entry point as has been released in a good long while. The genre-bending sax and drums duo O. put out their debut WeirdOs that stands as one of the most fun and exciting first spins of the year. Focusing on math-rock adjacent grooves and hairpin melodic turns, the pummeling tones of the sax are manipulated to the Nth degree, turning it into a vector for spacey aural explorations. One of my favorite discoveries from 2020, Loma, return with How Will I Live Without a Body?, an album filled with compellingly haunted piano-driven waking-dream pop that sit somewhere between Lightning Dust’s cobweb-tinged rockers and Half Waif’s misty golden-hour reveries. “How it Starts,” the record’s dourly majestic centerpiece, distills the pain of realizing that you are the one not fully present in a relationship and how detrimental that really is down to the devastating line: “You knew me well…[I] shoulda known you better.”
I’ve written before about Irish hip-hop group KNEECAP so I won’t repeat myself too much other than to recommend both the record and the film again as both are an absolute riot from start to finish. And, yes, I’m sorry, I’m aware of the unfortunate fact that I have situated their album in between several British musicians. Of course, that’s kind of a plot point within the film at least so I guess I’m in the right headspace. Regardless, Fine Art is both a fun listen and, I think, kind of an important one so, give it a spin, will ya, ya codger?
2024 continued 2023’s (and 2022’s and 2021’s and...) trend of multides of music commentators and publications decrying “peak shoegaze revival” but, frankly, I think we need to give up this notion that “shoegaze” (as nebulous a term as it actually is) is not, in and of itself, a “trend,” but rather a sound palette and set of aesthetic tools that truly are here to stay. And, personally, I welcome our new shoegaze overlords (ok, I promise I’ll limit the use of the “s” word from here). And one of those reasons is simply for how malleable and expansive the scruffy little subgenre is. Just take three of the “s-word” records that stood out to me this year, from late June, MILLY’s Your Own Becoming, GIFT’s Illuminator and Blisspoint’s Dog (the later two from August and November, respectively). Each, for sure, engage with most of the elements of the genre: enveloping fuzz, ethereal vocals, pummeling and repetitive rhythm section, etc. But each twist the formula in interesting and often exhilarating ways. MILLY’s occasional guitar solo pyrotechnics highlight just how tempting it probably is for this band to break into a more scream-laden vocal (something even Deafhaven, with outlets on other records, couldn’t resist with their remarkable 2021 foray into shoegaze on Infinite Granite where they finally cut loose on last track “Mombassa”). But, I think, that would err on the wrong side of Your Own Becoming’s particular sonic vibe. GIFT blurs the edges most into dream pop territory, picking up a little from where the late, great School of Seven Bells left off nearly a decade ago. And Blisspoint takes some of the wildest swings with songs like “Dogtime, “Cloudhouse” and “Hear it Again,” blending elements of industrial, drum ‘n bass and drony ambient into the whole stew. What I’m saying is…shoegaze will never die, long live shoegaze!
July arrived and with it, finally, Brat Summer. It seems, now, impossible that Brat Summer didn’t ever not exist, how indelible (both pro and con) and impact both the album and especially its marketing and arena tour push had on pop culture at large. I’ve already written quite a bit about the record, the artist and the pop culture moment so I won’t expand much more here. But I do want to point out that more than anything else, the thing that stands out when I think of those black pixelated words hovering above sickly green is the community this record created. Both online, where it seemed like it was easy to find good vibes on any corner of the internet talking about pop music vis a vis Brat, but also just in real life; how easy it was to put it on a playlist during a road trip or work party.. It’s just so hard to hate a project like Brat. And, for me, sitting around a kitchen table with friends discussing Charli at an unofficial Brat party is one of my highlights from last year (hi to all my friends who hosted and attended and thank you for the invite!)
But July also saw the release of other music that stayed in heavy rotation. Ill Times, the groovy collaboration from GUM (Jay Watson, session musician from Tame Impala) and Ambrose Kenny-Smith (harmonica-favoring rocker from King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard) sounds…well sounds kinda exactly like what you think it would sound like if you’re at all familiar with either of these prolific Australian songsmiths: and it’s absolutely glorious. From the gently loping album opener “Dud,” in which Kenny-Smith grapples with the loss of his musician-inspiration father to the rollicing “Minor Setback,” to the closing cut “The Gloater” as it explodes into a big-beat jam worthy of late 90’s Fatboy Slim, the whole record is crammed with clever musical flourishes (that vocoder!), snappy melodies and just straight up boatloads of charm.
Three electronic records also dropped that month that I want to call out (and one more from June that still fits this particular micro-trend at this point in the year). Xylitol’s Anemones, Kiasmos’ II, Oval Angle’s Figures of Speech and μ-Ziq’s Grush (the June refugee). Anemones is a near pitch-perfect update of early 90’s Warp IDM (meant in the best-possible way) and Grush just so happens to be an immaculately conceived project from a veteran from that very same era. Neither release kowtows to the exact forms of that previous time but both, rather, build on the sounds in interesting ways. Give μ-Ziq’s “Magic Pony Ride (Pt. 4.)” a spin as proof of concept: classic sounds but still exploratory, still searching and, more than anything, still reaching for a direction of uplifting emotion, a kind of trait of early IDM that’s often overlooked I think. Kiasmos’s new album didn’t quite reach the heights of their previous project, but I hope they keep at it as anything from them has been a welcome musical calming reprieve. And Oval Angle’s Figures of Speech was my favorite out-of-nowhere find of the year. “Kindly Kept Keen” has the transportative effect of a smoke machine in your friend’s basement before a space-themed tabletop roleplaying game. It’s retro-future music of the best kind. And, you know what, I have to mention one more very 90’s Warp-coded favorite from a bit later on, in October, and that’s producer Bogdan’s Racynski. The only thing better than the 18 tracks of blippy goodness he gives us here is perhaps the title of the thing: You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Stupid Forever.
The brutally hot summer drug on but August saw the release of some of the most fun music of the year, and some of the most inspiring and uplifting to boot. Jónsi’s First Light floats along like a radiant gossamer from Dan Simmon’s far-future novel Hyperion, floating above an ocean of tall green grass at sunset. Los Bitchos’ sophomore outing, Talkie Talkie, finds the cumbia-influenced instrumental foursome in absolute top-tier form. Each cut is honed for maximum effect, and that desired effect is to make the listener feel like it’s perpetually 10 minutes from sunset on the chillest half-empty beach imaginable. And I can’t not mention No Name from Jack White, who throws down a stunning bag of rage-stomping songs that show that, when he puts his mind to it, he can instantly conjure the unhinged guitar-madman from the early 2000’s.
But it was the release of the 26th studio record from Australia’s King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard that really reoriented my brain for the rest of the year (and, who knows, maybe the rest of my life?). In (and spoiler alert) 1989’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure we discover that, in the far future, humankind has formed a utopian culture based around the society-alteringly good music of the Wlyd Stallyns, the rock band the titular slacker duo would go on to popularize in the timeline of the film. If there is any band working today who might have the power to be a real-world Wlyd Stallyns and unite us all around incredible music and embodies the ethos of “be excellent to each other and…party on dudes!” it’s this group of seven mad lads from Melbourne.
Flight b741 is an entire world unto itself and probably got more individual spins than any other record in years. Once I got the itch, it was easy to put on the bluesy-into-rocker opener “Mirage City” and bask in the harmonies, sympathize with the universal tale of the small town kid (“I can’t wait to leave this nightmare behind,” “I die if I stay here, reborn if I leave!”) and rock out in the second half only to be drawn into the catchy opening melody of “Antarctica” and before I knew it I’d be singing along with its call and response chorus (“Take me away!”) before slipping into “Raw Feel,” which features the most upbeat depiction of the kind of ego-numbing realization of the existential gravity of the fact that one's own perception is reality: “the same shit for me ain’t the same shit for you (woo!)”.
And then, yeah, by then I’m three tracks deep and the album hasn’t let its grip up for a moment and I’d have no choice but to keep listening to the whole thing. I could continue doing a track-by-track breakdown as each one of these tracks as each one has wound up meaning something profound to me but I should really just encourage you to take a few spins through it.
…but I at least have to also gush about a few more songs! “Sad Pilot” which is a musically bubbly but lyrically bleak tale of an alcoholic pilot in therapy. I love whoever’s at the mic with the “relationSHIPS falling to pieces” bit in particular as it never ceases to send a chill down my spine (could be Joey Walker, could be Ambrose Kenny-Smith, I’m torn). I already wrote about the inspirational “Le Risque” in my best of 2024 track breakdown but I’d be remiss if I didn’t also point you to its really fun music video. And “Field of Vision” is a righteously rockin’ “POV: “Ur King Gizzard performing live on stage lol.”
In the finale, “Daily Blues," the Wly Stallyns of it all comes full circle. The lyrical message, though almost cringingly earnest, is also straightforwardly profound: “We ain’t that different, lay down your weapons. What you gotta do is: find that person you hate, grab ‘em by the hand, look ‘em in the eye and say, ‘I love you.’” And it’s more than just arguing for the action, they explain the reason to care: “they’re getting fucked up daily.” And, of course, by implication, so are all of us. Daily. And that’s a reason to have those blues daily, but, as the song builds to its raucous denouement, it’s also a reason to stand up for what’s right. “All the bigots go get fucked, give us back our free love. Faith only binds you to ideology. That ain’t peace and that ain’t free.” And although I’m becoming more and more ambivalent about the practice of ranking music, I have no problem shouting at the top of my lungs this was my favorite album of the year, hands down, no questions asked.
And since, for the first time in four years, this is the only release from King Gizzard this year, I won’t have more to say about the band after this so I’ll also want to reminisce about the truly life-changing life concert I was able to attend in November as the band toured through Las Vegas. I went with a friend and fellow member of the weirdo swarm and to say it was mind-blowing is a deep understatement. In spite of the horrors of modern life, we are at least afforded the fact that this incredible experience was also captured by a film crew (footage forthcoming) who’ve released the audio. Like, listen to how the house comes down during “The Grim Reaper.” I’m truly grateful to have experienced this with my good friend; a truly unforgettable event that I kind of can’t believe really happened to me in this real life of mine.
Rolling into September the mood, as it inevitably has to, shifted. Foxing released their self-titled fifth album and it’s a harrowing, near scorched-earth, listen. The bright synths and hesitant optimism of 2021’s Draw Down the Moon have been shuffled off stage to make way for noisy, nervy, chaotic grandeur. I was completely caught off guard by the thundering Tundra Rock, the record from Norwegian band Slomosa that I wrote about previously so won’t belabor more here. Two other out-of-left-field favorites dropped in September as well: first, the math-rock by way of surf rock album A Bit Jumpy from two-piece Socks and Ballerinas. It sounds a bit something like if Ratatat swore off weed and instead adhered to a strict regimen of black coffee and Zyn pouches. And second, the record from Palestinian-Canadian singer/songwriter Nemahsis titled Verbathim. It’s a beautiful little collection of indie-pop tunes that borrow a little from Miya Folick with its easy, understated hooks, a little from Soccer Mommy’s relentless observational meanderings and even a bit of good old’ fashioned piano-inflected fun from indie-pop old guard Regina Spektor. I have to recommend the extremely insightful article from Hearing Things’ Julianne Escobedo Shepherd with the artist behind Nemahsis, Nemah Hasan. Of note is the discussion of the remarkable music video for “Stick of Gum” which she filmed during in Jericho inside the West Bank even as Israel targeted Gaza only hundreds of miles away. It’s a powerful statement of lived resistance. And finally, the release from jazz/electronic stalwart Floating Points, Cascade, was filled with a much more club oriented sound that we’ve heard from the free jazz/electronic artist in some time, but, in the fact that it’s filled with straight up bangers I can’t quite classify that as out of left field since, well, it’s Floating Points, it was going to be pretty good regardless.
Half Waif’s heartbreaking and autumnally magisterial See You At the Maypole, arrived, fittingly, right at the change of the season in October. With many songs exploring mastermind Nandi Rose’s incredibly difficult ordeal with a miscarriage, it’s not as “easy” a listen as some of Half Waif’s previous outings. But I can guarantee that it’s the most moving, heartfelt, raw and challenging music that this exemplary musician has released in her already remarkable career. Canadian post rock lifers Godspeed You! Black Emperor put out not only their best album in over a decade (and that’s saying something) but one with their most upfront, powerful message. It’s all in the (non) title, referencing both the date of completion of the album but also the number of dead in Gaza as of that moment: NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD.
Kelly Lee Owen’s Dreamstate, also out in October, thrummed with life and provides an interesting counterpoint with the album that modular synth producer Craven Faults released the following week. Bounds is as bleak and harsh as the black and white photo of a barren footpath to nowhere on its cover. Goat’s self titled release wasn’t quite as awe-inspring as the previous year’s Medicine, but then, that’s an extremely high bar to clear and the 2024 offering from the still mysterious psych rockers is a extremely good time. The synth stylings of Hawksmoor’s Oneironautics pull as much inspiration from krautrock legends Krafwerk as they do from early electronic wunderkind Jean-Michel Jarre and make for an extremely woozy listen. And the tight-as-a-drum sophomore release from pop rocker Pom Pom Squad, Mirror Starts Moving Without Me rounded out the month as it hit with the force of meteor.
The tail end of the year saw the release of the excellent country-rock tinged They’ll See Light from Portland’s Vista House. They have the swagger of bands with five times as many records under their belt sand their beer-soaked rockers are some of the best this decade from anyone, anywhere. Don’t believe me? Give “A Seat Behind the Wing” a listen and pay attention to that volcanic mid-song guitar solo/breakdown. Just incredible stuff.
And at the end of the year, we find pretty staggering releases from three British electronic musicians, all top of their particular sphere within that ever shifting genre label, two with deep back catalogs and all with something extraordinary to offer. Ben Luka Boysen’s Alta Ripa is filled with compulsive, late-night odysseys that all culminate with the angelic interlude in the heavenly “Vineta.” The prolific 36, something of an elder statesman in the current wave of “active ambient” put out something that’s genuinely new within his fairly vast oeuvre: a vocal album. With Exit All the Lights, 36 not only deploys his towering army of reverb-laden synths but also mixes in spacy vocals from singer Yassie G. The effect is, in some ways, startling. The album, in its entirety, has the cumulative effect of putting the listener into that singular headspace, one only encountered at the very end of the fogiest, dreamiest nights. It’s as easy to fall asleep to as is it is to get energized by. A true standout from one of the hardest working musicians in the field.
And in December, true giants and geniuses in the game, Autechre, released a staggering amount of music with their AE_2022– project: the accumulation of two years worth of live touring and continued high-level experimental digital artistry at the intersection of live music and high-wire live programming. It’s a truly humbling amount of new material; yes, a fair amount of it does appear to be overlapping, but a a lot of it isn’t and regardless, each time I’ve listened to one of these performances, I get so thoroughly lost in the dramatic explorations of sound that it all becomes pretty incomparable pretty quickly. I’ve been able to listen to about a third all the way through so there’s certainly more to be mined but if you’re, uh, pressed for time (and you want an Autechre recommendation? who are you, this imaginary musical sadist who’s made it to the end of both this extremely long article and overought fourth-wall breaking parenthetical?) then hit play on the the 19th selection, from a performance in Lyon. It’s a mesmerizing, consciousness-warping trip that has as many dazzling heights as some of their best work. I still long, of course, for Autechre’s next “proper” studio release (if they’ll ever really explore such a thing again) but if they’re releasing music as complex, challenging and just futuristic as these live sets show, then I’m certainly very happy with what we have collected here.
And that’s where I’ll leave you. There was certainly mountains more music from 2024 that was worth exploring. I’m extremely grateful to have been able to listen to so much good music from this year and I hope that in sharing some of these with you that I’ve been able to impart a little bit of joy and happiness. I take so much of both from all of my music listening in any given year and it’s my hope that even a little bit of that shines through. Thank you to all these incredible artists; may their work continue to inspire us into 2025 and beyond.
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